Region 2 DVDs, Questions

10 comments (closed), posted on january 28, 2004, tags: tech

Can someone explain to me why multi-region DVD players can't be sold in the United States, but can be elsewhere? I thought region encodings had something to do with copyright, but after some research today I found that to be untrue.

It seems region encoding is just a way for countries to control how their products are sold and to which group of people. The past few years I've been thinking that importing region 2 DVDs (UK, etc) was at least borderline illegal, but that's not so. It's perfectly legal... it's just difficult because US DVD manufacturers make it so damned difficult to play anything but region 1 discs.

After looking endlessly for a multi-region DVD player that I could buy without having to deal with a "black market" or "Russia," I found some interesting information today—my DVD player can be hacked to remove region encoding requirements. As far as I can tell, hacking your DVD player to remove this restriction is not illegal, as the encoding has nothing to do with copyright. So long as you're not going to use this hack to play stolen DVDs, copied DVDs, etc, it's legit to do it.

It also seems like most DVD players have a hack to do this (which makes sense, since I'm sure manufacturers test the DVD players for all regions before locking them down based on their sales location), and therefore most people can turn their current region 1 (or 2) DVD player into a multi-region player. Then it's all about buying DVDs from Amazon.co.uk.

Does anyone have any experience in this regard? I would like to hear from anyone who is currently living in the US and playing Region 2 discs. I don't want to feel like I'm losing quality or working crazy hard to view discs from the UK, and I don't want to damage my DVD player. What I do want, however, is to be able to buy BBC and other UK DVDs when they are released, rather than waiting a year to get them in the States. If I change my region to 0, that means I'll be able to play any encoded (or non-encoded) disc, right?

Your input is appreciated.

The Office Series 2 DVD Info

7 comments (closed), posted on january 28, 2004, tags: entertainment

My friend Kevin (of Los Angeles Times fame) emailed me last night about The Office - Series 2 on DVD:

Regarding your The Office post, I have a contact at the BBC who tells me the second series of The Office will be released in the U.S. on April 20th.

Although that seems dreadfully far away, at least I know when to expect it now. He also said this of future seasons:

They made two more shows after Series 2 in the UK (They were Christmas specials that got huge ratings). Gervais said that's the end of that show.

And apparently they're making a remake of it on NBC... you know it's gonna be another Coupling disaster. Greg Daniels, the producer of King of the Hill, is behind the American The Office. God help us all.

An American version of a popular, award-winning BBC hit produced by Greg Daniels? Fantastic! Where do I buy the hammer to smash my television with?

A Review of the Newest Trailers

3 comments (closed), posted on january 27, 2004, tags: entertainment

The following is a collection of one-to-two-sentence reviews of each of the trailers currently listed under "Newest Trailers" at Apple.com. Note that I've watched every trailer but have obviously not seen any of these films.

» Continue reading A Review of the Newest Trailers

Blacklisted

posted on january 26, 2004, tags: movable type

After a very long time of forgetting to/being lazy about installing Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist plugin, I've finally done it today. Hopefully this will eliminate the endless supply of spam comments and trackbacks I get here. If you find yourself unable to comment for some reason (and you're not trying to spam me), send me an email and let me know.

Today seems to be anti-spam day.

SpamSieve 2.1.2

posted on january 26, 2004, tags: software

It's a coincidence that today, the day I was going to post an entry about how I recently installed SpamSieve and complain that the only bad thing about the app was that it couldn't move messages to a spam folder in Apple's Mail app (therefore rendering it a bit useless to me since I don't want to see the junk mail at all, regardless of whether or not it's properly flagged), happens to be the day a new version is released that completely removes this shortcoming.

SpamSieve version 2.1.2 is now completely compatible with Apple's Mail application and is therefore finally exactly what I've been looking for to get rid of the thousands of junkmail messages I get monthly. It's a good thing I've been training SS for the past few days so that now that it's actually capable of getting rid of the messages for me, it's already quite well trained (yes, that's right—only a few days and SpamSieve is already kicking 98.9% of my spam's ass).

On a side note—if you're wondering why I don't just use Mail's built-in junk mail filter, I'll quickly explain: I did. For a full year. Up until two months ago when my filter got corrupted and Mail would quit every time I flagged something as junk (or vice-versa). The only fix was to delete my filter and start over, losing a full year of training. Since then I tried retraining it, but for some reason it just wouldn't learn so I gave up.

I'm willing to pay $25 to rid my life of spam, and that's exactly what SpamSieve is doing for me.

Good Television

2 comments (closed), posted on january 26, 2004, tags: entertainment

Millions of Americans watching the Golden Globes must have been really confused when Ricky Gervais, co-creator and lead of The Office, a BBC comedy, stepped on stage not once but twice to win both the Best Comedy and Best Comedy Actor awards at an American awards show that has never had a UK winner in those categories before.

I, however, am not surprised. The Office is truly unique and definitely one of the funniest new shows in the past few years. Gervais is especially hilarious to watch, but only because he plays his character—David Brent, "the seedy boss"—almost too well. The show is completely written by Gervais and co-creator Stephen Merchant, but feels mostly ad-libbed, which has a surprising effect on you as a viewer: you feel like you're watching a real documentary. That feeling makes you cringe even harder when David Brent tells a bad joke and stands there giggling while other characters stare at him, and makes you laugh even harder when Gareth Keenan (Mackenzie Crook) says something utterly ridiculous about being in the army.

If you haven't yet done so, consider purchasing The Office - The Complete First Series on DVD. It's only $20 for six episodes of quality television (and behind-the-scenes stuff too). You won't regret it. Now if they would just finally release the second series on DVD here in the US...

Lots of Good Stuff

5 comments (closed), posted on january 20, 2004, tags: software

Plenty of Apple-related stuff has been happening lately. I've been meaning to write several little entries about various things, but time has been against me lately what with xPad, work and Zelda needing constant attention. Here's a collection of short bits for your consumption.

iLife '04

iLife arrived on Friday (pre-ordered it), and it's fantastic. GarageBand is exactly what I wanted a few months ago, and I'm thrilled with the application. This is going to spark a huge movement of regular people making music that actually sounds good. It's so easy to use. If you can click a mouse you can make music with GB in minutes. If you can actually play an instrument as well, the possibilities are endless. Very cool.

iPhoto 4 (what happened to 3?) is much faster on my G5 and is now a usable application. After moving all 600 pictures I've had floating around my harddrive into iPhoto I did some initial sorting and was pleased with how quick the app responds now. The only thing keeping me from using it before was speed. The addition of smart albums and ratings is great too. Strangely, I think this upgrade might actually cause me to take more pictures.

iMovie 4 has a lot of the things I wished version 3 had, which makes it even more solid. For consumers or "regular people," iMovie 4 offers just about everything you could want in a low-level digital video editor. Especially now that you can record directly from your iSight and modify clips in the timeline.

iTunes + iPod = Spinning Beach Ball

If you've got an iPod and you've recently upgraded to iTunes 4.2 (via the web prior to the release of iLife '04, or via iLife itself), you might be experiencing a problem where you cannot move music to your iPod without getting an I/O beachball and eventual iTunes hang and death. If you're anything like me, this pisses you off because not being able to move newly purchased iTMS music to your iPod renders said purchases nearly useless since we don't listen to music in our office nearly as much as we do away from home. Even if you're not like me, this is frustrating.

There have been several suggested fixes, all with mixed results. Works for one person, not another, etcetera. I can tell you that for me, unplugging my iSight fixes the problem. This apparently doesn't work for everyone (and, frankly, it's strange that it works at all), and obviously won't help you if you've suffering from the problem and don't have an iSight. I would suggest checking in on this discussions thread from time to time for updates. Apparently Apple knows about the problem, but it's surprising something like this could go on for so long without a fix when the iPod/iTunes is at the forefront of Apple's marketing campaign right now.

Speed-Up OS X 10.3.2 Start-Up

Many users (me included) have complained that the 10.3.2 update to OS X caused start-up times to increase noticeably. On my Dual 2GHz G5, my start-up time (measured with a stopwatch manually from the moment I hear the chime until the login window finished loading) with build 10.3.1 was 38 seconds. After updating to 10.3.2, the time changed to 1:05, which is nearly twice as long and quite noticeable. Luckily, this delay is caused by OS X looking for a directory in the wrong location during start-up, which hangs the process and adds unnecessary time. You can fix this by copying the directory from its actual location to the location in which OS X looks or, better yet, create a link to the proper location. Open Terminal and type the following (no line-breaks):

sudo ln -s /System/Library/Extensions/BootCache.kext/Contents/Resources/BootCacheControl /usr/sbin/BootCacheControl

Enter your password and restart twice. You should see a noticeable speed increase in start-up time. My G5 now starts up in 40 seconds (only two seconds shy of the speed of 10.3.1). It should be noted that my start-up time would be faster if I didn't have Unsanity haxies, MySQL and Apache installed. [Originally read about this fix on Mac OS X Hints, further information (including using link rather than copying directory) from this Apple Discussion.]

OmniWeb 5 Preview
If OmniWeb 5 is anywhere near as cool as I think it's going to be, it might be the first web browser I will ever pay for in my life. There are some really fantastic features and ideas there, and I can't wait to try it out. Since it's based on WebCore now, it's like using Safari but with additional features which might just be worth paying for.

xPad Beta Testers Needed

15 comments (closed), posted on january 9, 2004, tags: xpad

Update: I am no longer accepting applications. Thanks!

Want to help test future xPad versions? Here's how you can apply to be part of the beta testing team:

• If you have not done so already, purchase an xPad license. Only registered users will be accepted as beta testers.
• Send an email to beta at getxpad dot com. Make the subject of your email "beta test" and include the following information in the body:
  • Your first and last name.
  • Processor, RAM, Video Card and resolution info, formatted something like this: Dual 2GHz G5 / 1.5GB RAM / Radeon 9600 Pro / 1680 x 1050. If you do not know which video card you have, that's fine—please still specify your resolution. Please also specify if you are using dual monitors with spanning.
  • OS X version and build, like this: 10.3.2 build 7D24 (if you don't know which build you're using, you can find it by viewing the About This Mac panel and then clicking on the OS X version number).
  • If you have an iPod, please specify which generation it is (1st, 2nd, 3rd or mini).
  • If you have a Palm product, please specify which model you have (examples: Tungsten E, Zire, m505).
  • If you have a .Mac subscription, please note it.
  • If you have a viable server to which you can upload via FTP (or SFTP), please note it.
  • If you have a network on which multiple macs running OS X 10.2 and higher reside (at least two), please note it.

Before submitting your application, please be aware that you must be able to devote at least 4 hours a week to beta testing xPad. Obviously, the more time the better. I'm not asking for you to spend all of your time on this, but I do need to be able to rely on feedback at every point of the beta process.

Your responsibilities as a beta tester will include bug reporting, feature and interface testing, bug hunting (trying to break the application and/or find problems), regular use of beta builds so as to test them in a normal working environment, and, of course, commenting on the application and suggesting new features, tweaks, etcetera.

Please note that not all applicants will be selected. This is more or less first-come, first-serve, but also relies a bit on your setup as well (I need to get a group with many different environments so as to best test the application evenly). I will be accepting applications for the next 10 days.

xPad Roadmap

18 comments (closed), posted on january 8, 2004, tags: xpad

It's not surprising that I receive many emails a day asking questions like, "When will xPad have [this feature]?" or, "When will the next update be?" So I thought I would take a minute to share a tentative xPad roadmap. Please note that this is in no way absolute and could change at any time. But it will at least give you an idea of how I plan to manage the project in the near future.

January

• Fix any open bugs found in version 1.0 (surprisingly, this count is holding at 2—both of which are cosmetic).
• Small feature addition and current feature tweaking.
• Build full beta-test group (see end of entry) and test build.

Early February

• Minor build release (probably 1.2).

Mid-February through Late March

• Develop version 2.0.
  • Addition of several features including global quick search and .Mac/FTP synchronization and many others.
  • Full beta testing.

April

• Release version 2.0.

This will probably change, but it's a good guess. As you can see, I plan to roll-out version 2.0 in early April. I've gotten tons of great feature requests and lots of feedback, and I plan to pack a lot of great new stuff into the next version.

Now's still a great time to buy xPad, however. As I said before, all updates will be free for registered users. That means if you buy xPad now, the 2.0 update will be free. I can't promise, however, that when version 2.0 comes out xPad licenses will still be only $9.99. Depending on how much I cram into the next major release, I might have to tweak the price-point. Get in the on the ground floor now and you'll get it all for $9.99.

Want to get xPad news first? Join the xPad announcement list. Just visit the xPad page and subscribe at the bottom—you'll get xPad information via email. Don't worry, I won't bombard you with email, and I promise not to use your address for anything else.